DL is BS

But then some of us could have told you so!

For more than a year now, the mainstream media has been blasting all kinds of stories about how supposedly “down low” or “DL” black men are having sex with other men then having sex with women, and as a result, are the link to the spread of HIV among heterosexuals.

A no account Nigrow named J.L. King has tried to make a lot of money with a book telling his own personal tale of internalized homophobia and self-hatred as if it were gospel truth and widespread reality, and even the queen of daytime talk herself, Oprah, jumped on the bandwagon.

Well guess what?

The federal government researcher whose study on young gay and bisexual men was cited in those mainstream press reports as evidence of the health threat said her work was not focused on down low men and there is little evidence to support the view that these men threaten the health of others.

Imagine that!

So what can we learn from this? Somebody (I don’t want to speculate as to who) has spent an awful lot of time misrepresenting facts so as to demonize black men who have sex with men. Ask yourself why.

AND–this is the important part–the rise in HIV infection rates among heterosexuals is most likely the result of…hold onto your hats now…unprotected heterosexual intercourse, just as most people who work in the field believed all along.

You see kiddies, the HIV virus doesn’t give a damn about sexual orientation. It is spread through an exchange of bodily fluids such as blood, semen, vaginal fluid, mother’s breast milk (a low risk transmitter) or saliva (an even lower risk transmitter), which are present in gays, straights and bisexuals. People at highest risk are those having unprotected sex (like anal) with multiple partners. (For those of you who have never watched porn, lots of straight folks do this too.) Intravenous drug users who share needles, are also at high risk. Shooting up is not limited to any one type of person either.

So, twenty odd years into this worldwide epidemic, don’t you think it’s time we stopped thinking HIV only affects “other” people?

The truth is now out about the great DL myth. Let’s see how widely it gets reported.

UPDATE: I came across this commentary and thought it similarly appropriate.